Observation of Higgs Boson Decay to Bottom Quarks

Area of Science:

• Particle Physics
• High-Energy Physics
• Standard Model

Background:

• The Standard Model (SM) describes fundamental particles and forces.
• Higgs boson decays are crucial for testing SM predictions.
• The decay of the Higgs boson to bottom quarks (H→bb) is a significant SM process.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present the observation of the Higgs boson decay to bottom quarks.
• To measure the signal strength of this decay channel.
• To test the consistency of experimental results with SM predictions.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of proton-proton collision data collected by the CMS experiment at sqrt[s]=13 TeV in 2017.
• Focus on Higgs boson production in association with a W or Z boson (VH).
• Search in final states with 0, 1, or 2 charged leptons and two identified bottom quark jets.

Main Results:

• An excess of events consistent with H→bb decay was observed.
• Combined VH measurements across multiple center-of-mass energies (7, 8, and 13 TeV) yielded a significance of 4.8 standard deviations.
• The measured signal strength for VH production was 1.01±0.22, and for all production processes combined, it was 1.04±0.20 with a significance of 5.6 standard deviations.

Conclusions:

• The observation of the Higgs boson decay to bottom quarks is confirmed.
• The results are in excellent agreement with the Standard Model predictions.
• This measurement provides strong evidence for the Higgs boson's coupling to bottom quarks.